WHO WE ARE

When we both entered the room belly first, we immediately knew a friendship was cooking. We found a shared love for the Earth and Her medicine, Moon cycles and chocolate. We cooked post-birth meals together during pregnancy, trying to prepare for the unknown. We chose the same doula, and then birthed 1 day apart. During postpartum we were each other’s life line. That meant weekly hangouts, rituals, tears and laughter which lead us to a lasting sisterhood as we stumbled into the role of Mother together. What was known, was that we needed each other.

Donna Wilding

I am committed to continuous transformation, so I feel that to tell you who I am, is to tell you who I was.

I am a recovered advertising executive of 10+ years who left the industry to feel joy in what I refer to as my ‘work.’ I slowly and successfully built up my yoga teaching career, alongside teaching Reiki.

I then found Anna Verwaal (international birth advocate) through my personal, powerful and painful journey of pregnancy and miscarriage. She awakened my passion to help people understand the energy around conception and to help families feel empowered through labour and birth. I became a DONA trained doula, passionate about preparation for birth and Motherhood.

Following that, ALisa Starkweather gifted me her presence for a 9 month long women's mystery and empowerment school. I can't tell you much about that (I have to hold the mystery!) but I can tell you that we worked a lot with the elements thru ancient ceremonies and rituals. She had me confronting my fears in a whole new way.

During those 9 months of mystery school, I was in the magic of my second pregnancy. For me, pregnancy was a powerful initiation into Motherhood, which has been the fastest and deepest transformation I've endured. This beautiful, personal and at times, isolating journey has revealed that our culture doesn't honour the passage into Motherhood (beyond gifts and games at a shower) and it has awakened my love to celebrate this transition via ritual, community and self-care.

You can often find me deep in the forest, and always with a rock (or two) in my pocket. I am fuelled by listening deeply, loving fully, and changing the world from the inside out.

I honour my ancestors of European descent, as well as those from Italy and Greece.

Deslee Mihalyi

I took a winding and unexpected road on this journey to get to where I am now and it’s magic keeps unfolding out in front of me.

Fast forward to the time in my life I unwittingly began my plunge down the rabbit hole and entered a world I had always felt was there but had no philosophical concept to wrap my head around. A world where magic actually exists. s a child, I was an international level competitive athlete. In hindsight, I can see that this was a necessary training for me to really ‘get into’ my body and reach its outer limits. At this time I also learned about how one’s energy and emotional state affects the outcome of one’s body, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Twelve years ago, that plunge into magic inspired my studies in Traditional Chinese Medicine where I learned how to work with ‘Qi’, the animating force of all existence. This work provided the wisdom and words to understand something I had felt in my body all along.Traditional Chinese Medicine also brought me back from disassociation of my natural feminine rhythms and cycles - something that is conditioned early on in an athlete.

I then took an abrupt but fortuitous tangent in my quest to understand life and moved to Peru to begin an initiatic and apprenticeship process with the Grandmother and Grandfather teachers there. When I returned to Toronto two years later, I sought out ceremony and sisterhood as support.

In 2014, I was invited to participate at a Moon Dance here in North America. There, I was introduced to more Grandmothers and the way of the Moon Dance which continues to guide me on my way. Becoming a mother and progressing now with the conception of our second has been a direct result of the Moon Dance path.

I aim to live each day mindfully while staying connected to the Dance of Life. It makes my heart sing to share that Dance with others.

I honour my ancestors of Northern European, Sami, Eastern European and West Asian descent.